Wednesday, December 08, 2004

No I'm kidding. For some reason I feel embarassed that I was channeling the same spirit of hero-worship at him last night that Strom was directing at Walter Williams Saturday. For which he should be made fun of. [...of fun made...made of fun... Oh, forget it!] As should I.

Though they're both heroes worthy of emulation if you ask me.

Anyway, that's not what I came here to say.

I didn't do a post on Pearl Harbor Day because I was too busy reading everybody else's.

Now, I like to read anarchists, or rather, anarcho-capitalists, because they're a fiery lot and I have more than a little sympathy for their positions. I believe the government should butt out of a lot of things they're up to and that a lot of the problems of today are the result of government screw-ups in the past, many of which continue. The Open Door Policy, forcing foreign governments to trade with us, most notably Japan and China, doesn't appear to have worked out well, for instance. It's very interesting that the country that appeared to have reacted most positively to having their door kicked open, Japan, is the one that ended up causing the most trouble.

Sixty-three years ago, on December 7, 1941 , more than three hundred Japanese planes descended upon Pearl Harbor in a horrendous surprise attack. Or, at least it was a surprise for the American servicemen and civilians who resided at the base, some 2,400 of whom perished in the terrible onslaught.

I'm putting his links in so that you see he has them.

Despite the difficulties confronted by historians and others who attempted to reveal that Franklin Roosevelt likely had foreknowledge of these attacks, the case is fairly solid now. RobertStinnett's groundbreaking book, Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor, contains the best argument and evidence, so far. The US government had broken the codes necessary to learn of an imminent threat, and FDR had pursued a deliberate policy of provoking the Japanese – cutting off their oil supply, assisting their enemies in China, ignoring their diplomatic attempts to ensure peace with the United States, and placing US military personnel in harm's way near Japan – in order to get them to fire the first shot and open a backdoor into a war against Germany. Others have compellingly argued that the US government also wanted to exert US global dominance in the Pacific, which it feared would be undercut by the Japanese.

Here's my quibble: you never hear any of these people, here or at Anti-War.com, justify the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945. (The Chinese date it from Japan's takeover of Manchuria in 1931.) If I'm not mistaken, Stinnett understood that Roosevelt could see the crap hitting the fan in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Pacific and took the actions needed to get involved before it was too late.

The Open Door Policy and the Versailles Treaty may have been to blame in the end, but the world would not have been a better place had we let the Nazis, Fascists and Japanese Imperialists take over.